In an August
Washington Examiner column, I argued that this year’s governor elections in New Jersey and
Virginia would have little precedential significance, unlike some other off-year elections in those
states.

Boiled down, my argument was that in New Jersey you had a governor who could not lose and in
Virginia you had two governor candidates who could not win.

Now the results are in, and my predictions were not far off. Republican Chris Christie won 60
percent to 38 percent in heavily Democratic New Jersey.

In Virginia, the state closest to the national average in the last two presidential elections,
neither Democrat Terry McAuliffe nor Republican Ken Cuccinelli won 50 percent of the vote.
McAuliffe, far ahead in the polls for months, eked out a 48 percent-to-45 percent victory.

So, these contests are of limited precedential value. But they do provide some interesting
lessons for both parties.

Lesson 1 for Democrats: Obamacare hurts. Two days before Halloween, McAuliffe was leading 47
percent to 37 percent in the Real Clear Politics average of polls. In seven days, his margin melted
from 10 percentage points to 2.5 points.

The big news during that period was the rocky Obamacare rollout and stories revealing that
Barack Obama’s repeated statements that people could keep their insurance or their doctor were
either lies or (as many Democrats concede) misleading.

The exit polls showed that 46 percent of Virginia voters favor Obamacare and 52 percent oppose
it. In a state Obama carried twice.

Lesson 1 for Republicans: Provocativeness hurts. Cuccinelli’s positions on abortion and same-sex
marriage are not much different from Christie’s or Virginia Republican incumbent Bob McDonnell’s.
But his tone was, and he lost single women by 42 percentage points.

Lesson 2 for Democrats: Your youth vote is evaporating. McAuliffe carried 18- to 29-year-old
voters by only 45 percent to 40 percent; Christie lost them by only 51 percent to 49 percent. Those
were in states where Obama in 2008 carried young voters 60-39 percent and 67-31 percent. They may
be discovering that Obamacare raises their health insurance premiums enormously.

Lesson 2 for Republicans: Obama can still energize some Democratic base groups. Democrats got
high turnout in Virginia from blacks and young singles — in contrast to 2009. Republicans can’t
count on these voters staying home.

Lesson 3 for Democrats: You’re not doing so well with immigrants. Hispanic and Asian turnout in
Virginia was down from 2012. Christie carried Hispanics 51-45 percent in a state where they voted
78-21 percent for Obama in 2008. Polls showed Hispanics souring on Obamacare, and Christie kept
showing up in their communities for four years.

Lesson 3 for Republicans: Raise more money. Cuccinelli backers complain that the Republican
National Committee kicked in only $3 million, not $9 million as in 2009.

Fair point. But why didn’t the Cuccinelli campaign raise more from tea partiers across the
nation? Why not match the dollars McAuliffe raised from Clinton connections and crony capitalists?
Why not raise money rather than whine?

Lesson 4 for Democrats: You can’t count on tea partiers to shut the government down again. The
victory of establishment-oriented Bradley Byrne over a tea partier in Alabama’s 1st Congressional
District runoff election Tuesday suggests that, even in a hyper-conservative district, the impulse
among Republican voters for confrontation with Democrats is waning.

Lesson 4 for Republicans: You can’t count on Obamacare continuing to implode. It may well do so,
but you’d better have alternatives to offer.

The two parties have been closely competitive in six of the 10 congressional elections over the
past 20 years. Republicans fell below competitive levels in 2006 and 2008, when they were perceived
as incompetent.

Democrats fell below competitive levels in 1994 and 2010, when they seemed guilty of ideological
overreach.

During the government shutdown, some Democrats hoped the Republicans would suffer from both
incompetence and overreach. Now, as Obamacare founders, there seems more danger that the Democrats
will.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner.